Super Talent USB 3.0 SuperCrypt – SSD in Disguise – Benchmarks

The USB 3.0 SuperCrypt flash drive is ready to use right out of the box but for best performance, Super Talent recommends download of their own driver. The user simply downloads and uncompresses the zip file, clicks on ‘Setup’ and then ‘Install’ and the new driver is installed. It gets a bit tricky from this point as we then go into Device Manager and replace the appropriate drivers but rest assured, the documentation is very well laid out and easily understood. You then plug the Supercrypt into the USB 3.0 port.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Once plugged in, two distinct drives appear which are the data drive and that used for password protection of the SuperCrypt. The software can be used to create and change passwords as well as resetting the hardware encryption. If you elect to set a password, ensure that you write it down because the only way to access the data drive is through input of that password which is 128 bit AES encryption. If you forget the password, there is no way to recover the contents of the data drive.

BENCHMARKS

Testing for the SuperCrypt consisted of common software to include Crystal DiskMark 3.0 X64, ATTO Bench, HDTach, HDTune Pro as well as PCMark Vantage X64 which consists of synthetic testing that duplicates common tasks of the average user. In taking our first Crystal test, we were stunned at the speed of this drive. This purported flash drive easily climbs over several currently available SSD releases.

Our charts compare the SuperCrypt flash drive to the Crucial C300 RealSSD in SATA 3, Imation M-Class 128Gb SSD as well as the Samsung Spinpoint 1.5TB hard drive to provide an equal balance of understanding for both storage mediums. All results below are reflected in MB/s.

A close look at the Crystal DiskMark scores show how capable the SuperCrypt is as it surpasses the Imation SSD in all but one access method. It also easily surpasses the hard drive with random 4k scores of the SuperCrypt being 6.25 times better than the hard drive.

By this point, we have settled into the fact that this isn’t your normal flash drive and, in fact it isn’t your normal SSD either. The only thing that really stands out from what we might expect is that the CPU use is a bit high. Lets take a look at scenarios that we might see on a daily basis.